On the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time we hear the Gospel about Bart (i.e. Bartimaeus), the blind man. Bart's path to healing is, in a sense, the path for all of us to follow in reaching spiritual health. In Mark 10:46-52 Bart hears Jesus on the road, knows that he cannot help himself, believes that Jesus could heal him and cries out loudly and repeatedly for help. When he receives his sight, he turns his life over and follows Jesus on the way.
In what sense are we all like Bart? Each of us has blind spots, things about ourselves that we can't (or don't want to) see. Scottish Poet Robert Burns wrote "O would some power the small gift give us, to see ourselves as other see us." He was writing about a society woman who did not know that a louse was crawling on her bonnet. We would be freed, Burns writes, from many a blunder if only we knew could see.
As we meditate on Bart's story ,we might ask for an awareness of our own blind spots. If they are long standing blind spots and shortcomings, all the self-help books in the world will not help us to eradicate them. We simply have to ask God's help and then go ahead as best we can.
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